Easily distracted by shiny objects.

August 31, 2010

I just got my Kindle download of Joanathan Franzen's Freedom. The words spring off the page. I'd read sections of it (Where? In the New Yorker?) and thought, "This is what I've always observed about Middle Americans, but I guess I'm just weird." Read the book and you'll know what I mean.
Like all novels I enjoy it's gossipy and snarky but also profound.

August 30, 2010

I was looking at some clips from the Tea Party rally, and I don't think that movement is going anywhere. Palin and Beck are patently phony. Their lack of conviction was apparent as they spoke. They talked about God and how the country has lost its way and the founding fathers and so on, but there was nothing of substance that they had to offer the crowd. No call to action. Very little energy on display.Featuring "minority" people at their rallies is backfiring, because it undercuts the racist subtext of the Tea Party movement. And the Christianity on display is wishy-washy. This has got to leave convinced racists and religious fundamentalists in a state of bewilderment. And they were told to tone it down, too. None of those Obama signs and so on. I did see one Nazi salute, but it was all pretty tame, in general.Maybe Americans have forgotten how to be activists! Too much Prozac?A friend approached me the other day to tell me about a rally in Hilo to protest some form of injustice. She said, "It has to be a peaceful and non-confrontational rally." I thought to myself, "A protest in Hilo will put a stop to that injustice, for sure." It's a waste of resources and energy and just a feel-good operation. I think protests and rallies here should focus on local issues, where they can be quite effective.How to be effective in a larger context? I'm hoping to get some clues on The Nation Cruise, but I have to confess I'm doing this mostly for my own satisfaction.We have lost the momentum that Obama came into office with, but that was inevitable. Governing and campaigning are not the same thing. I think we should stop criticizing Obama. That is eating our own.

August 29, 2010

Big Island makes the national news. Gee, I could have made as good a video as CNN did. I guess it was an amateur video. The military assures us that this fire is nowhere near all the depleted uranium at the Pahakuloa Training Area, where they drop all those bombs on the lava beds. Whew! That's a relief. Bummer if that smoke were laden with long lasting low energy radiation!

We took our late afternoon swim at Richardson Beach, where we can get a view of the Saddle area, the site of the fire, but we couldn't see much. Just clouds and maybe some smoke. Later that evening, when we were out walking the dog, we smelled smoke on the breezes coming down from the mountain, but it was not very strong.

August 28, 2010

Grr!! Another woman I know is pregnant with a baby she will not be able to afford to raise.

Her sister, mother of four, was telling me about all this after regaling me with her own anger at all the people who are supposed to provide services for her and her family. She has no job and no prospect of one and spends most of her time being furious at her kids and furious at their teachers, social workers, doctors, etc. etc. whom she blames for her predicament. It is her good heart that has led her astray, right?

I asked her if her sister had considered getting an abortion, and she gave me a blank look, as if she had never heard that bad word before. So I said, "Did you ever consider having an abortion?" She said, "I could never do that. That would be like taking away a part of me." Good heavens! What are women hearing in their churches and seeing on television? If her chances in life aren't very good, doesn't she at least want her kids to have a better life? Right now they are living with her father, who might enjoy his home more if he did not have to share it with her four kids and the drive-by boyfriend. Oh, wait. He's in prison right now, but he'll be back real soon.

Thank god she got her tubes tied after #4, as I and others urged her to, since she's just a girl who can't say no. But how much better if she had stopped at one or two. I just read that the birthrate is going down as the hard times hit. These are just the last people to get the news that family planning is a necessity in this day and age, and no matter what kind of a warm and wonderful person you are, it's best to be able to provide for your kids.

More: I feel very compromised by all of this, because of the class barrier between her and me. She was one of my MIL's caregivers. We always paid her well, gave her time off when she needed it, and she did a great job for us. But she had this boyfriend, by whom she got pregnant. She provided him with a truck and cellphone with her wages. He wrecked the truck and busted the cell phone throwing it at her. Then he got her pregnant again. When she started out with us, she had two kids and some modest plans for the future, but Mr. Wrong fixed that. She could not get him to use birth control, and birth control pills made her sick, she said. Her class attitudes really bother me, especially the idea of a world well lost for love. Her take on life is sad and sentimental, about the opposite of my thinking. I really care about her while knowing that my ideas about controlling one's life repel her and mean in her mind that I am a bad woman. The best women suffer and die young in her world. She was at a funeral yesterday of a cousin who died at age 39 of colon cancer. Bravely enduring excruciating pain year after year, this poor soul finally got her diagnosis and lasted a year after that.

Have you heard of Alex Kuczynski? Many claim to hate her. She is very lovely in a Lauren Bacallesqe way. This good fortune gives her license to be outrageous. Her beauty is to some extent the result of going under the knife, but not all of it. She is charming and animated, as the interview with Colbert demonstrates, and it really is hard not to warm to a person who looks like that. We're all suckers for good looks and ingratiating ways. And her stuff sells. She's a horrid woman, but how fascinating she is! Narcissists are like that. It's like watching a superb performance of self to see a woman of her kind in action.

I'm about halfway through her dishy book on the topic of plastic surgery, Beauty Junkies, and it is one of those reads that I usually don't mention, because the topic and writing style violate my projected image as that of a fairly serious person. I am also fond of all those Kitty Kelley books about celebrities like Frank Sinatra or the Reagans or the Queen, or the many many books I have read about old time glamor queens like Joan Crawford, Shelley Winters and so on.

Kuczynski generateda lot of outrage when she wrote about her surrogate pregnancy. Someone who was out to get her, obviously, captured this unflattering photo of her holding her new baby, who was gestated by another woman. If any picture could sum up gender, class and race issues in this country in one simple photo, this has got to be the money shot. The whole article lays it out perfectly: upper class woman, middle class surrogate mom, immigrant nanny. And of course, dad, beneficiary of it all but not overtly in control of the situation.